Then love, and love's devouring pain.
Some two years previous to the incidents of our opening chapter, in a quiet house situated on G—St., in the vicinity of Belmont Square, an aged couple sat quietly talking, while the shadows fell longer and darker about the room, and the increased tread of passing feet spoke plainly of the end of another day of that weary labor that fell to the lot of the large number of tradespeople who lived in this row of modest houses.
The aged couple mentioned were occupying the two narrow windows that faced the crowded thoroughfare, and the two faces were pressed anxiously against the glass, while the old eyes peered eagerly up and down, over and across in a careful search for the one of whom they had been quietly speaking.
There was silence for a little while and then the old man leaned back in his chair and, while wiping the moisture from his glasses with a generous square of cambric, said querulously:
"It is mighty strange, Marthy, where Lizzie is. She ought to be home before this."
"I know it, father," responded his wife meekly. "She's been acting very strange of late, staying away from home and coming in at all hours as dragged out as if she had been walking the streets for miles."
"Maybe that's what she does," snapped the old man, and then, as if ashamed of his hasty words, he added in a softer tone: "Though why she should do that I can't see. She's got a good home here with us and has had ever since our poor Mary died and left us our grandchild in the place of our child to care for and protect."
"And we've done both, father," said the old lady, gently. "Lizzie has no need to seek pleasure outside her own home, what, with the rooms to look after, her books, her piano and her needle work, she ought to be pretty well contented."
"That's so, Marthy, but she evidently is not. Now ever since that young man rented our two back rooms and began to spend his evenings here—"
"You don't think she is in love with him, do you father?" interrupted his wife quickly.